Air Quality & Weather Systems

Four companies, Balfour Beatty, together with Costain, Carillion and a BAM Nuttall Morgan Sindall joint venture, have been awarded the contract to upgrade a 17 mile stretch of the M60 and M62 to a ‘smart motorway’. The US$313 million upgrade, for the UK Highways Agency, aims to increase capacity, reduce congestion and shorten journey times for motorists. The M60 between junctions 8 and 12 will be upgraded to a controlled motorway with traffic flows managed by technology interventions responsive to the

Vaisala claims it is set to revolutionise the ITS road weather industry by launching an entirely new road weather station, the RWS200, which, when combined with Vaisala’s RoadDSS software suite, delivers a complete road weather solution called iRWIS. Vaisala iRWIS consists of intelligent roadside hardware making its own decisions, combined with sophisticated decision support software that makes decision making easier and more accurate. iRWIS is flexible, from the scalable software solutions to RWS200 tha

The I-95 Corridor Coalition, working through the University of Maryland, and following a thorough competition, has announced a new contract for procuring real-time speed and travel time data. Under this new contract, Coalition member agencies are expected to realise up to a 50 per cent reduction in cost over the prior contract. Member agencies may choose from Here, Inrix and TomTom to procure traffic speed and travel time data. The multiple-vendor approach creates a traffic data marketplace, allowing ag

David Crawford previews a work zone travel breakthrough. In February 2014, the Port of Long Beach in California launched what it claims is a groundbreaking construction zone navigation aid - LB Bridge mobile app. The app is designed to help drivers during the Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement programme by keeping them up to date on activity and the ensuing traffic diversions when construction starts in summer 2014. The unusually content-rich app is designed to convey current project news (enlivened by phot

ClearPath Weather from Iteris is the company’s next-generation road maintenance decision support system (MDSS). The cloud-based software solution provides winter maintenance strategies for optimising personnel, equipment, and chemical purchases in addition to providing actionable pavement information for more effective government agency maintenance response.

TrafficLand is to partner with with Global Weather Corporation (GWC) to market a service combining local road and atmospheric weather condition forecasts of with real-time local traffic camera video. The combined content is available through an application programming interface (API) that allows customers to choose data layers, which can include local weather data for road conditions, temperature, precipitation and wind speed, as well as real-time video from local roadside traffic cameras. The new servic

US manufacturer and supplier of infrared (IR) and white light illuminators and license plate recognition products, iluminar, is supporting NBC Universal’s The Weather Channel Tornado Track crew. Featured regularly on The Weather Channel on the road chasing storms, the Tornado Track crew uses a GMC Yukon SUV to check severe weather conditions and report their findings live, on-air and online. Helping the Tornado Track crew to see the powerful natural phenomenon in the dark is iluminar’s new Q-Ball came

David Crawford welcomes a national first. Urban freight movements, while commercially and socially vital, are a growing logistical headache for planners and people alike. Figures from France’s Lyon Laboratory of Transport Economics indicate that goods transport in major urban areas accounts for: 20% of traffic; 35% of CO2 emissions made by all urban trips; and 50% of the diesel used; while final km delivery runs account for 20% of the total cost of the transport chain.

Sporting events always create problems for traffic planners and none more so than the Winter Olympics. It is difficult to think of more diametrically opposite challenges for transport planners than the 2012 Olympics in London and this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi: from a summer event in the heart of a megacity with well established transport infrastructure to winter games with unpredictable weather and events in remote and mountainous locations. The Winter Games are always a challenge and Sochi was no di

An innovative project at a busy UK retail park could provide the blueprint for a new approach to pedestrian safety, according to its developers. The system utilised hard-wired active flashing LED road studs from Rennicks UK to delineate the crossing, in conjunction with LED warning signs from Swarco. Pole-mounted C-Walk pedestrian detectors from Flir activate the high performance LED studs to create a striking visual warning for motorists approaching an internal crossing at Giltbrook, near Nottingham.